


Survivor's Guilt

by Trans_Queer_Punk



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Gen, No Incest, Non-Binary Klaus Hargreeves, Non-Sexual Age Play, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Season/Series 02, Sober Klaus Hargreeves, Suicidal Thoughts, i wrote this a year ago, little!Klaus, little!diego
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-14 15:27:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29173374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trans_Queer_Punk/pseuds/Trans_Queer_Punk
Summary: "Survivor’s guilt: a mental condition that occurs when a person believes they have done something wrong by surviving a traumatic event when others did not, often feeling self-guilt."
Relationships: Diego Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Diego Hargreeves/Eudora Patch
Kudos: 17





	Survivor's Guilt

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry I haven't been on in a heinously long time- I do that. If you're waiting for me to update my other fics, I probably won't :/  
> This fic does contain mentions of NSFW stuff, but no details, and for the most part it's purely non-sexual.

Diego woke up fucking angry.  
  
It’s one of those days where the ghost of the life he once knew fogs his mind like cigarette smoke and it just feels so wrong that he’s stuck in this god-awful storyline where everything he loves has been ripped out from under him like a rug, like he can’t even trust the ground underneath him to hold him up. Everything feels so wrong.  
  
Eudora is gone, but he still feels her presence. He’s heard that phrase from people who are grieving, and at the time he’d scoffed. He’s not the kumbaya type, he doesn’t believe in Heaven or divine intervention or that stupid Law of Attraction. But now that she’s gone, he feels her at odd times. It's excruciating.  
  
He wonders how any story can have a satisfying ending when all that waits is death. Happy stories are snapshots, taken out of context, little pieces of the picture that make a nice little anecdote to carry on your keychain to show off to friends.  
  
He curses whatever God would do this to him. He curses Lady Luck, he curses Fate, he curses Coincidence. He wants someone to blame, someone tangible he can punch and stab and hurt.  
  
But Hazel and Cha-Cha are gone, and even if they were here in front of him, a lifetime of torture would not be nearly enough justice for the pain they’d inflicted on him.  
  
Now, in this hipster cafe, Diego feels small. He can’t talk, so instead of ordering he just slinks back to a table in the corner. The baristas either don’t notice or don’t care, too busy serving the endless stream of upper-middle-class white people.  
  
He’s not fully there yet, stuck in some limbo where his body is starting to regress but his mind is still the rapid stream of sarcasm and anxiety. He bites his fingernails, hoping that no one notices him and tries to talk to him. They wouldn’t, would they?  
  
He tries not to think about what Patch would say.  
  
He hasn’t cried since that day. He lives in a state of shell-shock, numb until something stupid sends him into a downward spiral he can’t get out of. Then, just as suddenly as the emotions come, they are gone again.  
  
He hasn’t been able to regress. When he tries it just feels ridiculous, like playing a character he hates while knowing he is a terrible actor. He’s thrown away all his gear, smashing the pacifiers into little shards of plastic, ripping apart the clothes. The stuffies- no, the stuffed animals, he reminds himself, were the hardest to get rid of. But a grown man can’t have stuffed animals.  
  
It’s for the best, he tries to tell himself. That part of him is over now.  
  
Don’t think about that, he tries to tell himself. Don’t think about her.  
  
Eudora is a rabbit hole he doesn’t want to go down, not now and not ever. She’s gone. She’s dead. Just move on.  
  
He needs to move on.  
  
But he can't.

  



End file.
